Minimalist and Maximust programme

The difference between a minimalist and a maximualist program has separated Marxist parties for as long as it has existed. The difference between fighting for reforms under capitalism and offering your full programme for full power of a communist or socialist type are hugely different. Leon Trotsky outlined in his transitional programme the death agony of capitalism which I’m still studying to bring out conclusions and to reach an understanding as the current one I understand is the one lead by the vanguard party leading by the nose the workers to the final conclusion that society needs to be changed and that can only be carried out with mass independent socialite consciousness and the working class gaining power. I’ve been trying to get my head around this Trotskyist idea and I may be getting there but I still don’t quite understand how the fighting for better wages and better conditions under a trade union struggle eventually leads you to realising the need to over throw the current system. As I can see those who are the most militant in the trade unions fight very hard for their members and for themselves but ultimately does this lead to socialist or Marxist ideas? I don’t think so personally. As Lenin correctly stated trade union contiousness ness can only lead you so far. A revolutionary party a Marxist party is still needed to give workers those revolutionary ideas to change society which trade unions will never give. As Trotsky correctly writes in his chapter on The Minimum Program and the Transitional Program The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat. The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism. Mankind’s productive forces stagnate. Already new inventions and improvements fail to raise the level of material wealth. Conjunctural crises under the conditions of the social crisis of the whole capitalist system inflict ever heavier deprivations and sufferings upon the masses. Growing unemployment, in its turn, deepens the financial crisis of the state and undermines the unstable monetary systems. Democratic regimes, as well as fascist, stagger on from one bankruptcy to another. The bourgeoisie itself sees no way out. In countries where it has already been forced to stake its last upon the card of fascism, it now toboggans with closed eyes toward an economic and military catastrophe. In the historically privileged countries, i.e., in those where the bourgeoisie can still for a certain period permit itself the luxury of democracy at the expense of national accumulations (Great Britain, France, United States, etc.), all of capital’s traditional parties are in a state of perplexity bordering on a paralysis of will. The “New Deal,” despite its first period of pretentious resoluteness, represents but a special form of political perplexity, possible only in a country where the bourgeoisie succeeded in accumulating incalculable wealth. The present crisis, far from having run its full course, has already succeeded in showing that “New Deal” politics, like Popular Front politics in France, opens no new exit from the economic blind alley. International relations present no better picture. Under the increasing tension of capitalist disintegration, imperialist antagonisms reach an impasse at the height of which separate clashes and bloody local disturbances (Ethiopia, Spain, the Far East, and Central Europe) must inevitably coalesce into a conflagration of world dimensions. The bourgeoisie, of course, is aware of the mortal danger to its domination represented by a new war. But that class is now immeasurably less capable of averting war than on the eve of 1914. All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet “ripened” for socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only “ripened”; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat, i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership. Of course Trotsky writes this on the verge of a world war and is right to write this but today in 2013 ? Are we on the verge of capitalist decay ? In some regards yes but in others no. In the East for example China has a opportunity to save capitalism if it wish’s it may not do and plunge the system into a huge long decline but the opportunities to save the system are there for sure. Reform or revolution the famous piece by Rosa Luxemburg is key to our understanding the ability for capitalism to survive is under estimated in my view. It cannot go on forever but it to out live its life and its ability to evolve cannot be under estimated eater. Mainly due to the lack of leadership in the working class but also the unprepared nature of the revolutionary Marxist movement. We cannot catch up history is already here. We must hastily learn from history in order not to make the same mistakes again.